Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Imaginary numbers push the boundaries of calculus and other branches of math. Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images ...

Imaginary numbers are necessary to accurately describe reality, two new studies have suggested. Imaginary numbers are what you get when you take the square root of a negative number, and they have ...

Mathematicians were disturbed, centuries ago, to find that calculating the properties of certain curves demanded the seemingly impossible: numbers that, when multiplied by themselves, turn negative.

If you have ever read advanced textbooks or papers about electronics, you may have been surprised to see the use of complex numbers used in the analysis of AC circuits. A complex number has two parts: ...

Have you ever sat in a math classroom and wondered, “When will I ever use this?” You might have asked yourself this question when you first encountered “imaginary” numbers, and with good reason: What ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...